The Younger Set Part 40

"As long as it's a prospect or a possibility I don't care how vague it is," said the other cordially. "Will you admit it's a possibility?

That's all I ask."

"If it will please you, yes, I will admit it. I have altered certain ideas, Boots; I cannot, just now, conceive of any circ.u.mstances under which I should feel justified in marrying, but such circ.u.mstances might arise; I'll say that much."

Yet until that moment he had not dreamed of admitting as much to anybody, even to himself; but Lansing's logic, his own loneliness, his disappointment in Gerald, had combined to make him doubt his own methods of procedure. Too, the interview with Alixe Ruthven had not only knocked all complacency and conceit out of him, but had made him so self-distrustful that he was in a mood to listen respectfully to his peers on any question.

He was wondering now whether Boots had recognised Alixe when he had blundered into the room that night. He had never asked the question; he was very much inclined to, now. However, Boots's reply could be only the negative answer that any decent man must give.

Sitting there in the carpetless room piled high with dusty, linen-shrouded furniture, he looked around, an involuntary smile twitching his mouth. Somehow he had not felt so light-hearted for a long, long while--and whether it came from his comrade's sermon, or his own unexpected acknowledgment of its truth, or whether it was pure amus.e.m.e.nt at Boots in the role of householder and taxpayer, he could not decide. But he was curiously happy of a sudden; and he smiled broadly upon Mr. Lansing:

"What about _your_ marrying," he said--"after all this talk about mine!

What about it, Boots? Is this new house the first modest step toward the matrimony you laud so loudly?"

"Sure," said that gentleman airily; "that's what I'm here for."

"Really?"

"Well, of course, idiot. I've always been in love."

"You mean you actually have somebody in view--?"

"No, son. I've always been in love with--love. I'm a sentimental sentry on the ramparts of reason. I'm properly armed for trouble, now, so if I'm challenged I won't let my chance slip by me. Do you see? There are two kinds of sentimental warriors in this amorous world: the man and the nincomp.o.o.p. The one brings in his prisoner, the other merely howls for her. So I'm all ready for the only girl in the world; and if she ever gets away from me I'll give you my house, cellar, and back yard, including the wistaria and both cats--"

"You have neither wistaria nor cats--yet."

"Neither am I specifically in love--yet. So that's all right--Philip.

Come on; let's take another look at that fascinating cellar of mine!"

But Selwyn laughingly declined, and after a little while he went away, first to look up a book which he was having bound for Eileen, then to call on his sister who, with Eileen, had just returned from a week at Silverside with the children, preliminary to moving the entire establishment there for the coming summer; for the horses and dogs had already gone; also Kit-Ki, a pessimistic parrot, and the children's two Norwegian ponies.

"Silverside is too lovely for words!" exclaimed Nina as Selwyn entered the library. "The children almost went mad. You should have seen the dogs, too--tearing round and round the lawn in circles--poor things!

They were crazy for the fresh, new turf. And Kit-Ki! she lay in the sun and rolled and rolled until her fur was perfectly filthy. n.o.body wanted to come away; Eileen made straight for the surf; but it was an arctic sea, and as soon as I found out what she was doing I made her come out."

"I should think you would," he said; "n.o.body can do that and thrive."

"She seems to," said Nina; "she was simply glorious after the swim, and I hated to put a stop to it. And you should see her drying her hair and helping Plunket to roll the tennis-courts--that hair of hers blowing like gold flames, and her sleeves rolled to her arm-pits!--and you should see her down in the dirt playing marbles with Billy and Drina--shooting away excitedly and exclaiming 'fen-dubs!' and 'knuckle-down, Billy!'--like any gamin you ever heard of. Totally unspoiled, Phil!--in spite of all the success of her first winter!--and do you know that she had no end of men seriously entangled? I don't mind your knowing--but Sudbury Gray came to me, and I told him he'd better wait, but in he blundered and--he's done for, now; and so are my plans.

He's an imbecile! And then, who on earth do you think came waddling into the arena? Percy Draymore! Phil, it was an anxious problem for me--and although I didn't really want Eileen to marry into that set--still--with the Draymores' position and tremendous influence--But she merely stared at him in cold astonishment. And there were others, too, callow for the most part... . Phil?"

"What?" he said, laughing.

His sister regarded him smilingly, then partly turned around and perched herself on the padded arm of a great chair.

"Phil, _am_ I garrulous?"

"No, dear; you are far too reticent."

"Pooh! Suppose I do talk a great deal. I like to. Besides, I always have something interesting to say, don't I?"

"Always!"

"Well, then, why do you look at me so humorously out of those nice gray eyes? ... Phil, you are growing handsome! Do you know it?"

"For Heaven's sake!" he protested, red and uncomfortable, "what utter nonsense you--"

"Of course it bores you to be told so; and you look so delightfully ashamed--like a reproved setter-puppy! Well, then, don't laugh at my loquacity again!--because I'm going to say something else... . Come over here, Phil; no--close to me. I wish to put my hands on your shoulders; like that. Now look at me! Do you really love me?"

"Sure thing, Ninette."

"And you know I adore you; don't you?"

"Madly, dear, but I forgive you."

"No; I want you to be serious. Because I'm pretty serious. See, I'm not smiling now; I don't feel like it. Because it is a very, very important matter, Phil--this thing that has--has--almost happened... . It's about Eileen... . And it really has happened."

"What has she done?" he asked curiously.

His sister's eyes were searching his very diligently, as though in quest of something elusive; and he gazed serenely back, the most unsuspicious of smiles touching his mouth.

"Phil, dear, a young girl--a very young girl--is a vapid and uninteresting proposition to a man of thirty-five; isn't she?"

"Rather--in some ways."

"In what way is she not?"

"Well--to me, for example--she is acceptable as children are acceptable--a blessed, sweet, clean relief from the women of the Fanes'

set, for example?"

"Like Rosamund?"

"Yes. And, Ninette, you and Austin seem to be drifting out of the old circles--the sort that you and I were accustomed to. You don't mind my saying it, do you?--but there were so many people in this town who had something besides millions--amusing, well-bred, jolly people who had no end of good times, but who didn't gamble and guzzle and stuff themselves and their friends--who were not eternally hanging around other people's wives. Where are they, dear?"

"If you are indicting all of my friends, Phil--"

"I don't mean all of your friends--only a small proportion--which, however, connects your circle with that deadly, idle, brainless bunch--the insolent chatterers at the opera, the gorged dowagers, the worn-out, pa.s.sionless men, the enervated matrons of the summer capital, the chlorotic squatters on huge yachts, the speed-mad fugitives from the furies of ennui, the neurotic victims of mental cirrhosis, the jewelled animals whose moral code is the code of the barnyard--!"

"Philip!"

"Oh, I don't mean that they are any more vicious than the idle and mentally incompetent in any walk of life. East Side, West Side, Harlem, h.e.l.l's Kitchen, Fifth Avenue, Avenue A, and Abingdon Square--the denizens are only locally different, not specifically--the species remains unchanged. But everywhere, in every quarter and cla.s.s and set and circle there is always the depraved; and the logical links that connect them are unbroken from Fifth Avenue to Chinatown, from the half-crazed extravagances of the Orchils' Louis XIV ball to a New Year's reception at the Haymarket where Troy Lil's diamonds outshine the phony pearls of Hoboken f.a.n.n.y, and Hatpin Molly leads the spiel with Clarence the Pig."

"Phil, you are too disgusting!"

"I'm sorry--it isn't very nice of me, I suppose. But, dear, I'm dead tired of moral squalor. I do like the brightness of things, too, but I don't care for the phosph.o.r.escence of social decay."

"What in the world is the matter?" she exclaimed in dismay. "You are talking like the wildest socialist."

He laughed. "We have become a nation of what you call 'socialists'--though there are other names for us which mean more. I am not discontented, if that is what you mean; I am only impatient; and there is a difference... . And you have just asked me whether a young girl is interesting to me. I answer, yes, thank G.o.d!--for the cleaner, saner, happier hours I have spent this winter among my own kind have been spent where the younger set dominated.

"They are good for us, Nina; they are the hope of our own kind--well-taught, well-drilled, wholesome even when negative in mind; and they come into our world so diffident yet so charmingly eager, so finished yet so unspoiled, that--how can they fail to touch a man and key him to his best? How can they fail to arouse in us the best of sympathy, of chivalry, of anxious solicitude lest they become some day as we are and stare at life out of the faded eyes of knowledge!"